The Pain, My Mother, Sir Tiffy, Cyber Boy & Me Read online

  THE PAIN,

  MY MOTHER,

  SIR TIFFY,

  CYBER BOY

  & ME

  Michael Gerard Bauer

  An Omnibus Book from Scholastic Australia

  To Dyan and Celia, for all the times you

  helped me bring ‘what is within, out into

  the world’ and for the many ‘miracles’ you

  made happen for me. With thanks and love.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 The Pain

  2 There once was a girl called Mags

  3 Get away from her, you bitch!

  4 Shocking double standards

  5 The Year of the Butt

  6 Wrong they were

  7 Channelling Mad Max

  8 A reverse death knell

  9 A wacky, heartwarming, laughter-packed comedy romp

  10 The pothole that ate Goal 1

  11 Cyber Boy

  12 A man of mystery

  13 The invisible girl

  14 Some serious questions

  15 Sir Tiffy

  16 The Pain’s daemon

  17 Pleasant and reasonable

  18 A fatal feline attraction

  19 An actual male-type life form

  20 Positive happy vibes

  21 The stump thing

  22 The porking porkers

  23 Extreme corpse face

  24 My MAPLAD

  25 Now or never!

  26 A very agreeable zombie

  27 Being all metaphorical

  28 Best trick evaaaaaar!

  29 Prepare the prisoner for execution

  30 Right there in front of me

  31 We hothead types

  32 As thick as thieves

  33 Avec moi

  34 Truly groan-worthy

  35 Sunny Boy

  36 That time machine thingie

  37 Doing the Cyborg

  38 More muscle than shirt

  39 My Year Ten Graduation Dance Horror Story

  40 They’re playing our song

  41 Ba-bowwww!

  42 Where I choose to stop telling it

  About the author

  Also by Michael Gerard Bauer

  Copyright

  1

  The Pain

  It all started with The Pain. He officially came into my life exactly nine weeks and one day before my Year Ten Graduation Dance. And despite my very best efforts to wipe that day from my memory, I still recall it clearly.

  It was a Friday.

  The thirteenth day of the month.

  Notice anything there?

  I didn’t. Not at the time. There were no alarm bells blaring in my ears. There was no sudden sense of impending doom. Not surprising, really. My life up to that point hadn’t exactly been Teen Dream Central anyway, so ‘impending doom’ was more or less my default setting. Besides, there was nothing unusual about what was happening that night. I mean it wasn’t as if Mum had never gone out on a date since Dad left. She had. A couple. Eventually. And why not? She was still young. Ish.

  But the thing is, none of those dates ever meant anything. They were never going to lead anywhere. Like who’d be stupid enough to fall into that trap again? Not my mother, that’s for sure!

  Which is why, when The Pain turned up on our doorstep that first night to take Mum to the pictures, it didn’t raise a beep on my radar. Not even one peep of a beep.

  But that was before I opened the front door.

  And before he opened his mouth.

  After that?

  Well, after that, my radar was peeping and beeping like crazy.

  2

  There once was a girl called Mags

  Let me walk you through that first meeting, step by painful step.

  Ready?

  Okay, at the precise moment of The Pain’s arrival, I was in my room making a last-ditch attempt to salvage my hair (more disturbing details to follow) while my mother was upstairs in the bathroom putting the ‘finishing touches’ to her face.

  Then our front door bell rang and these words were shouted at me from above:

  ‘Get that for me will you, Mags? Won’t be long. And play nice!’

  Good one, Mum. Way to annoy the hell out of me, right from the get go.

  And what was my problem here, you ask? Well, for your information, at that particular moment in time, I had two very real and specific problems.

  My First Problem: Being called MAGS!

  My name is not Mags. It’s Maggie. Well, Marguerite actually. Marguerite Butt. (Yes I know. Get over it and move on. I have.)

  The point I’m trying to make here, is that while I admit that Maggie might not be the most delightful-sounding of names, surely you’d have to agree that it’s like a gentle lullaby compared to the ugly, belching, foghorn blast that is Mags.

  MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGS!

  Oh, excuuuuuuuuuuse me.

  But if you’re not yet convinced of its essential awfulness, let’s just pause for a second to consider the many super things that Mags rhymes with. Charming words like shags, dags, bags, fags, slags, rags, snags, hags, drags, nags, sags and gags. Aaaaaah yes, the very building blocks of poetry!

  There once was a girl called Mags …

  And you just know that’s never going to end well!

  Not that I’m totally anti-Mags. As a word, it does have its place. For example, Mags is a very acceptable name for those fat, ugly, rubbery things that petrolheads put on their cars and drool over. It is also an excellent description of the sound that Neanderthal footballers make when they’re hacking up phlegm. And of course, Mags is a fine title if you happen to be one of the freaky witches from Macbeth.

  Hi there. I’m Mags! Would you care to try some of my homemade tongue-of-dog pâté? It’s to die for! Even better than my world-famous eye-of-newt and toe-of-frog dip, according to my sisters. But then again, they are PRETTY WEIRD!

  HOWEVER, as I have pointed out to my mother on numerous occasions (seemingly with little effect), Mags is definitely not an appropriate name for a normal (not to mention, mature and sophisticated) HUMAN BEING.

  Oh, and while I’ve got your attention, perhaps I should add here (once again, mainly for my mother’s benefit) that any twisted, childish variations on Mags, like Maggles or Maglet, as well as excruciatingly embarrassing combos such as Maggly-Moo, Maggly-Poo, Maggly-Waggly, or Maggly-Waggly-Moo-Poo, are even less appropriate!

  My Second Problem: Being told to ‘PLAY NICE’.

  Play nice? I’m fifteen years old. Almost a fifth of the way to sixteen! Why was my mother speaking to me like I was a naughty toddler? And what exactly was she getting at anyway? Play nice? I always play nice! In fact I pride myself on my friendly and even temperament.

  Althoooooooooooough … on that night when The Pain turned up at our door, I might have been feeling just a touch on the prickly, cranky-pants side (to quote my nan), which of course under normal circumstances would be for me TOTALLY OUT OF CHARACTER. But if I was a bit prickly, cranky-pants (and I’m not saying I was), then I was prickly, cranky-pants for some VERY GOOD REASONS.

  Namely these very good reasons:

  1. I’d just got back the first draft of my Macbeth assignment from Sister Yoda (don’t ask). So was I on target for that A or possibly an A+ as I was hoping? Nuh. But hey, sooooo close! C+! Completely understandable really. Apparently my writing lacked a ‘clear and tight focus’. Apparently I had a bad habit of ‘scuttling off in all directions like a cat chasing a marble’. Apparently my use of figurative language was ‘somewhat heavy-handed’ and I had a ‘dangerous tendency
to go overboard with metaphors and similes’. (Talk about the pot calling the kettle a marble-chasing cat!)

  2. Mum and I had just finished another ‘discussion’ about my Senior subject choices. Like all our previous discussions this one revolved mainly around how I thought it would be a really good idea for me to take Film and Television, and Speech and Drama, next year so that I might pursue a career as an actor or film director, and how my mother thought it really wasn’t.

  3. I’d just marked off another week on my calendar, which meant there was just a day over nine weeks left until the big end-of-year Year Ten Graduation Dance. This was a problem because, unfortunately, I still had a minor issue to resolve regarding my partner. Namely, finding one.

  4. After school that day, I’d had my hair ‘professionally cut and styled’ at our local salon. And of course, when I say ‘professionally cut and styled’ please read ‘massacred to within an inch of its life’.

  Now, I want you to know that of all those excellent reasons for me possibly being a little bit prickly, cranky-pants the night The Pain turned up at our door, number four was easily the most excellent.

  This was because I’d spent the entire afternoon at the hairdresser, where for an insane amount of money, Sharlette, manageress of the Cut Above the Rest Salon, had convinced me to let Taarsheebah, the ‘freakin’ incredible’, ‘she’ll do awesome things with your hair’, ‘OMG she’s totes amazeballs’ trainee new girl, transform me into the frontrunner for the title role in the remake of The Bride of Frankenstein.

  And just in time for next week’s class photos.

  WOOHOO! MAGGIE BUTT FOR THE WIN!

  Naturally, Mum only made everything worse by saying lame things like:

  ‘You’re overreacting again, Mags (!). In fact the more I look at it, the more I think it’s you’ (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

  I can’t tell you how comforting it was to be told that my new hairstyle, which at that stage resembled something that had been gnawed into shape by a drug-crazed sewer rat, was ACTUALLY ME! (My apologies to any figurative-language-sensitive readers.)

  And yet, even in the face of circumstances as dire as those I’ve outlined above, I still managed, somehow, to be acceptably pleasant and reasonable that fateful night when I opened the door and came face to face with …

  THE PAIN.

  3

  Get away from her, you bitch!

  Of course at that crucial moment of door-opening, I had no idea the person standing there was The Pain. To me he was just some guy Mum was going to the movies with. Some guy who, based on Mum’s rare past dates, we would soon both happily never be seeing again.

  Which is why I didn’t really pay that much attention to him. Besides taking in the basics, of course. And the basics, as I saw them, were these.

  • Bit over average height.

  • A bit more over average weight – some signs of shirtstraining in the stomach region.

  • Build – somewhat bearlike.

  • Face – lacking the WOW factor but okay.

  • Age – at a guess, somewhere between late thirties and fifty.

  • Eyes – green. Possibly ‘best’ feature, although competition hardly fierce.

  • Teeth – all there and acceptably arranged and coloured.

  • Hair – plenty of it and pretty much free range. Not a big fan of the beard but at least it was short and he didn’t look too much like a bushranger.

  • Smile – kind of sneaky.

  • Clothes – functional but unlikely to grace the catwalks of Milan.

  • Overall impression – meh.

  Now it’s just possible that I might have been taking in those basics for longer than I thought, because Mum’s date said, ‘Hi’, except he said it kind of slowly with his voice going up at the end as if he was testing to see if I understood English. Then he added, ‘I’m Danny.’

  I watched as his eyes drifted to the top of my head. At first I thought he might be staring at a small scar I have on my hairline, but then I remembered Taarsheebah’s handiwork and assumed he was probably wondering if I’d had some horrific accident involving a trampoline and a high-powered overhead fan. I decided it was best to leave him wondering and respond to his introduction instead.

  ‘Oh yeah. Hi. I’m Maggie. Aaaah, Mum’s daughter.’

  See. What did I tell you? Even though I’d been the unsuspecting victim of Taarsheebah the Mane Mutilator, plus I had at least three other excellent reasons to be an extreme sourpuss, I was still unbelievably pleasant and reasonable. (And okay, yes, I know. That last bit about me being ‘Mum’s daughter’ was completely moronic, so let’s just put it aside and move forward, shall we?)

  Anyway, I was just about to say, ‘I’ll go get Mum for you,’ when he did this CRAZY AND ANNOYING THING.

  And the crazy and annoying thing he did was … HE STARTED SINGING!

  I know! Singing? Crazy and annoying, right? To make it worse, he was singing about how I should ‘wake up’ because he thought he had something he wanted to say to me. And he was doing it in a cringeworthy, growly, raspy voice and twisting up his face at the same time, like he was trying to swallow razor blades! Now I ask you, seriously, what sort of a person meets a total stranger and bursts into song?

  When he’d finished I had two index fingers directed at me like I was being cornered at gunpoint. I just stared at him. Really stared at him. I was desperately trying to find answers to the questions that were bubbling away in my head. Questions like:

  Does he expect me to applaud now?

  Could there be some form of singing Tourette’s syndrome that I’m not aware of?

  Has someone turned my life into a musical without telling me?

  Should I be contacting the local asylum and informing them that one of their most dangerous inmates is on the loose?

  I checked his face. He didn’t appear to be frothing at the mouth. I took this as a promising sign. But then he spoke and the words that came out might as well have been froth, because they made no sense to me at all.

  ‘Rod Stewart.’

  ‘Huh? Sorry, what?’

  ‘Rod Stewart.’

  ‘But … I thought you said your name was … Danny.’

  ‘No, not my name. That song – a Rod Stewart number.’

  I started nodding. I don’t know why I was doing this. It’s not as if I had a clue what he was talking about. That didn’t stop him though. Oooooooh no.

  ‘From the 1970s. Way before your time, I guess. Great song though. I play in a cover band and we do songs from all over. Bit of a hobby, but good fun.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Over Dub.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘That’s the name of the band. The one I play in.’

  ‘Great …’

  ‘You know, like in overdubbing the tracks.’

  I was still nodding. It wasn’t that I was understanding any better. It was just that I’d got a bit of a rhythm going now and I couldn’t seem to stop it.

  ‘Maggie May.’

  Why did this strange person keep saying random names out loud? Was he doing some sort of imaginary roll call? Was he seeing dead people?

  ‘What?’

  I’d stopped nodding now.

  ‘That’s the title of that old Rod Stewart song. The one I was singing. It’s called Maggie May.’

  Even though I’d lost the nodding, I was still doing a great job of maintaining my staring.

  ‘Maggie May?’ he said again. ‘You know … Maggie? Like your name.’

  And finally something started to download at snail speed into my brain.

  ‘Oh. Oh, right! I get it. Right. Yes. Maggie. My name.’

  That’s what I said, but what I was thinking was, Oh! Oh, right! I get it. Right. Yes. You’re a complete nutter, aren’t you, crazy singing person!

  I shot a glance back inside the house hoping that Mum had finally arrived to save me. No such luck. I was trapped.

  ‘Ah, so, would you like
to come … and wait … inside?’

  See, still unbelievably pleasant and reasonable even in the face of a Crazy Singing Person. I was a pleasant and reasonable legend!

  He gave me more of his sneaky, confusing smile.

  ‘Inside? Well, I haven’t quite graduated from my Basic House-training course, but hey, let’s live dangerously.’

  ‘Huh? Sorry, what?’

  ‘Nothing. I’d love to. After you.’

  He was still smiling at me. It was freaking me out a bit. I took him straight into the lounge room so I could dump him there and escape.

  ‘I’m sure Mum will be out soon. Don’t know what’s keeping her. I’ll just go check.’

  He nodded and I bolted for freedom. At last! But then, as I was leaving, I saw myself in our lounge-room mirror. Except it wasn’t really me. It couldn’t be! It was someone who looked like me, but for some reason they were wearing a racoon on their head. A racoon that had been attacked by Taarsheebah the Hair Assassin!

  The ghastly image made me stop. It made me forget all about the Crazy Singing Person right there in the room behind me. It made me move closer to the mirror and groan out loud. It made me start pulling and pushing at badly behaving strands and tufts of my hair and say, ‘Shit! Shit! Shiiiiiiiiiit!’

  Till a voice came from behind me.

  ‘Problem?’

  I spun round. SHIT! There was a strange man lurking in our lounge room! No, wait. It was just Crazy Singing Person.

  ‘Something wrong?’ he said.

  What? Was he blind as well as crazy?

  ‘Wrong? Only this,’ I told him, waving my hands around my hair.

  He looked confused.

  ‘There’s something wrong … with the space around your head?’

  Now it was obvious to me that, as well as being crazy and blind, he was also thick as a brick! I realised I’d have to spell it out for him.

  ‘My hair! That’s what’s wrong.’

  He tilted his head to the side and chewed on the edge of his bottom lip a bit.

  ‘And … the problem … is …’

  Oh, my god. I didn’t just have to spell it out for him. I had to sound out each of the letters as well!